The hidden benefits of buying Wired

Our new (July) issue focuses on “the new hidden persuaders” - high-tech tricks emerging in the marketing world to shape your desires and make you buy more. Everything from your TV set-top box that serves you personalised ads based on your viewing and supermarket loyalty card, to face-recognising billboards that know whether you’re a young woman or an older man – and then monitor your facial reaction when a targeted ad is served. It’s either very scary or usefully direct, depending on whether you’re a conspiracy theorist or an advertising exec, but what’s certain is that our package of investigations (from the UK, Paris and San Francisco, among other places) is extraordinarily deep and revealing – so congratulations to writers Charlie Burton, James Silver, Meg Carter and Mat Honan.

How, though, could we sell the issue itself, in the spirit of the subject matter? Obviously, with subliminal messages. So if you look carefully at our magazine cover, you’ll notice a hidden set of messages written in a layer of varnish. Buying Wired, apparently, will give you all sorts of desirable benefits. Then we had the opportunity to advertise on Spotify, so associate editor Ben Hammersley and I thought – spur of the moment – that we’d make the first subliminal Spotify ad. Two, actually, but one of them makes some particularly controversial claims about Wired – something about it increasing your sexual success... Sensibly, the bosses would only allow it to air after 9pm. But you can hear it by clicking here or on the icon below (parental guidance advised). And do let us know if it delivers for you on the promise...